Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Reporters Without Borders released its 2011-2012 global Press Freedom Index. The indicators for press freedom in the U.S. are dramatic, with a downward movement from 27th to 47th in the global ranking, from the previous year. Much of this is correlated directly to the arrest and incarceration of American journalists covering the 'Occupy' protest movements in New York and across the country. 'This is especially troubling as we head into an election year which is sure to spark new conflicts between police and press covering rallies, protests and political events.' Only Chile, who dropped from 33 to 80, joined the U.S. in falling over 100% of their previous ranking. Similarly, Chile was downgraded for 'freedom of information violations committed by the security forces during student protests.'"

The historical American press neutralization strategy rested largely on a mixture of drowning out the information with expertly crafted 'infotainment' and ensuring that the bulk of the journalists owed their paychecks and their 'access'(and often sympathized with personally) the people they were supposed to be writing about.

Not good for highest quality journalism; but all very soft-power. Overt suppression by assorted 'security forces', of varying levels of shadiness, is quite a different strategy...

Shall we start with the executive order allowing the assassination of American citizens who might be doing something the government doesn't like? Or the reversal on closing GITMO?, or the expansion of the use of drones by local police departments? SOPA, PIPA, Extension of the Patriot Act, expansion of the warranties wiretapping program? Need I go on?

Gitmo wasn't his fault - it was every congressperson who didn't want terrorists in their local jails that stopped that. The proposal of SOPA/PIPA were not Obama's fault, and in fact he said he would veto the bill, which meant Congress had to get enough votes to override his veto, which is one of the things that kept it from progressing. If SOPA/PIPA had passed Congress and Obama had signed it into law, you would be correct to complain about that, but that simply did not happen. Sorry Charlie.

The expansion of the Patriot Act happened because no congressperson wants to vote against making Amuricuh safer (TM), except possibly Ron Paul. You have legitimate beef with Obama about this, but I don't think he would get reelected if he hadn't signed it, and that is a bigger issue. The warrantless wiretapping program getting expanded simply did not happen - I do not know what planet you are from. His Justice Department did have a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act that gave them incredibly broad powers, but I would lump that under "Patriot Act" and not warrantless wiretapping.

Now, to the point: Obama is not worse than Bush in any way, period, full stop. Bush was a complete idiot that got this country into an Iraqi war for no clear reason or exit strategy aside from the lies his administration told the American public, started the Patriot Act, started the warrantless wiretapping program, started Gitmo, increased the "Constitution-free" zones to 100 miles around every border in the US (which encompasses ~90% of the US population according to the ACLU on their website), hired a company (which then contracted illegal immigrants) to build a wall to protect us from...illegal immigrants along the Mexican border, let the oil industry police itself (remember the big BP oil spill? guess who appointed the regulator for that one?), let the banks police themselves (remember the big financial meltdown because nobody actually looked into what they were buying?), and started the bank bailouts (which were smaller than Obama's bailouts) with the sole purpose of _not_ fixing the problem and instead letting the Obama administration handle it.

Anybody who thinks the Bush presidency was anything but a complete disaster for everybody except big business is probably either being paid off by big business or believes what they see on Fox "Fair and Balanced" News (which is paid off by big business). And that's what Obama had to deal with from Day 1. So, given that, I think Obama has done a decent job - hell, I am happy he is not just as bad as Bush, but I still think he can improve. And electing him again will allow him the political freedom to push what he wants to push because he won't be forced into following the demands of his financial backers because he won't be able to get a third term.

And that is why I will be voting for him again. That and none of the Republican candidates are much competition in comparison.

We elect Presidents in the U.S. Not dictators. The fact that you don't understand, or are unwilling to admit, how powerful Congress is, and how dysfunctional they've become, is the real source of your sickness.

Don't forget the take over of several American industries through "stimulus" funds and the takeover of banks through TARP. Never in the history of America has the POTUS fired the CEO of a major corporation until this president came along.

They didn't have to take the stimulus funds. And they didn't need to engage in the problems that led to needing the stimulus funds.

Plenty of smaller banks stayed out of the subprime and mortgage securities scam market and sailed nicely through the aftermath without needing TARP funds. Quite a few of the banks that did accept the money repaid it practically overnight so that they wouldn't have to deal with extra federal oversight.

Ford (unlike GM and Chrysler) didn't accept the stimulus funds, and so were able to fix things their own way. If you accept huge amounts of government funding to avoid collapse, then you better expect there will be an equivalent amount of government oversight and input into how you do things. And that includes the government firing management (who were responsible for the bad decisions to begin with).

If you're the largest shareholder in a company, you get the most say in how things are run, and who runs it. Doesn't matter if you as a shareholder are an individual, a mutual fund, a pension fund, or the government.

I don't know if you're just horribly misinformed, or a liar, but nearly every single thing in your post is wrong. It's what's called a Gish Gallop [rationalwiki.org]. You rattle off so many lies that people look and say "Wow, that guy sure knows his stuff" while the honest people can't refute them all fast enough. But I'll try anyway.

Starting from the quoted section:1) He didn't reverse on closing Gitmo. The Republicans blocked all funding for the transfer of prisoners elsewhere. He is literally not allowed to spend a single cent on closing the prison. You cannot blame him for that.2) The use of drones by police departments is a nonissue. These drones aren't carrying weapons -- they're no different from helicopters, except that they're cheaper, which is a good thing.3) SOPA & PIPA were opposed by Obama. You can't seriously be complaining about his support for something he didn't support. You might as well complain about his support for Al Qaeda.4) The stimulus funds did not "take over" any industries. Give one example. Just one. Literally, I want you to name a single American business which is now government owned because of the stimulus. Either that, or come back and apologize for lying.5) TARP was passed by Bush, and didn't take over banks in any case.6) The health care law does not take over anything. It puts some new regulations on private insurance companies, prevents individuals from abusing the system with an individual mandate, and helps individuals for whom the mandate would be burdensome by providing them with subsidies. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. The man is lying to you.7) New environmental controls? You'll need to be more specific, but I suspect this is every bit as much a lie as the rest of your talking points.8) Obama didn't make the decision about Boeing's plant. The National Labor Relations Board did. That's their job... to determine when businesses are retaliating against unions and block such maneuvers. The fact that South Carolina is a "red" state was irrelevant. Boeing was retaliating against their unionized workers in Washington state, and that's against the law.

The Republicans were able to filibuster in the Senate for all but a few months. For the first several months, they made Al Franken jump through hoop after hoop, long past the point that it was obvious to everyone that he had beaten Mr. Coleman. Then, just a month later, Ted Kennedy passed away, his illness having prevented him from voting during that one month window. Paul Kirk was appointed in late September as a temporary senator ahead of the special election. Four months later, Scott Brown took office.

That was it: a four month window during which the Democrats were focused on getting health care reform passed. For the other twenty months of that two year period, the Republicans had the filibuster, and used it at every opportunity.

In what universe were the Republicans unable to filibuster the senate?

If you'll recall, the actual 60 vote majority lasted all of a few months until Ted Kennedy fell ill. And it was only 60 by including the "independent" Lieberman. And involving something like bringing angry kids captured in Afghcanistan (or, to hear Faux News tell it, unstoppable terrorist supermen who would walk right through the walls of supermax prison), you can be sure a few Blue Dog DINOs would defect as well... which was exactly what happened.

The real news is that the crimes committed at gitmo haven't stopped, they've just started committing them at Bagram air base instead, where there's way less pesky international observers and stuff.

1) It's good that the stimulus funds came with strings attached. That's a heck of a lot better than just handing out money with no oversight. If these companies weren't willing to accept the strings, all they had to do was pay back the funds, or not take them in the first place. When you take out a loan, the bank isn't "taking over" your finances.

2) Since you acknowledge that banks left the TARP program because they didn't like the attached strings, that seems to me to be proof that it was NOT a takeover. Generally you don't let people opt out of being taken over.

3) You claim that a bill 2000 pages long is incomprehensible. Do you realize how short that is? That's less than half the length of the Harry Potter series. Even less, in terms of words, since if you've ever looked at the raw text of a bill you'd know they have huge margins and triple spacing between lines. If you think no one has read it, you're a fool. You can be sure that the Republicans went through every page with a fine tooth comb. The worst they found was the provision that allowed the sick and elderly to get a free appointment with their doctor to discuss Do Not Resuscitate Orders and the drafting of a will.

4) The Keystone pipeline was rejected because the Republicans didn't give Obama time to thoroughly review it. They insisted on setting a short timeline, so he rejected it rather than approve it without doing the necessary research.

5) The fact that China has poor environmental regulations doesn't mean we should follow suit. That's called a race to the bottom. If China made slavery legal, would you suggest we do the same to stay competitive?

6) I live in Washington state. I closely followed the build up to Boeing's announcement that they were moving the 787 production to SC. It certainly seemed like retaliation, and the NLRB agreed.

7) Your claim that all five members were appointed by Obama is laughable. You clearly just looked it up on Wikipedia, because otherwise you would know that at the time of the ruling the board had two Obama appointees, one Bush appointee, one Clinton appointee, and one vacancy. Do your homework next time.

For anyone who did a TL;DR on this, the "No Strings attached" link goes to a WSJ opinion piece complaining about doling out dollars only when States are willing to pony up part of it - a practice that's well over 100 years old (and well known to save money because while anyone will take a 100% free gift, less money is spent when people have to pay a part of it). There's some whaaagarble about not being able to continue to pay for benefits after the money has run out, which is an obvious (and stupid) point to make. You don't get something if you don't pay for it. Then, there's bashing over non-transference clauses (so if you say you're going to build a road with Fed dollars, you don't switch around your budget to lower what you were going to pay for the road anyway, and use the savings to put into some lawmaker's slush fund). Again - these types of clauses are literally over a century old, so it's hardly a "string", other than a standard "do what you say you're going to do with the money" type of string.

I'm not going to even go into the rest. It's pure partisan bullshit. It's Republican farmers who are against the Keystone pipeline, for example. They're terrified about what a leak will do to their water supply. And the President isn't getting a single vote from them.

But look, ArcherB is going to believe what Archer B wants to believe, no matter what. When someone decides to believe something, there's not a single fact that's going to keep them from doing so.

.. like the Obama administration forcing Boeing to cease plans for a plant in S. Carolina because S. Carolina is not a union state (that's right! The POTUS told a private industry that they could not open a plant in S. Carolina, a red state, because it was not union friendly enough).

Wait. I was at that plant earlier today, and now you're saying that it wasn't built? Who do I talk to around here about temporal discrepancies?

Oh, cry me a river of fucking crocodile tears, over your uber-conservative ignorant bullshit. Obama has done no such things; he's been the Unions' Uncle Tom, happily handing them everything they wanted.

Well for starters, we're in a State of Emergency as a country. See, Bush declared said SoE after September 11th. The National Emergencies Act [wikipedia.org] exists to prevent an indefinite state of emergency (to some degree), but that's basically what's been happening. It has to be renewed every year or two and Obama has signed it every time (here's 2009 [whitehouse.gov], just an example). Why? Because being in a State of Emergency also grants the Executive Branch around 500 additional powers that it wouldn't otherwise have.

It's always struck me as odd how people can be so vigilant about 1984 but not a brave new world. I don't understand people who spend all their time worrying about big government, but think big business is a good thing. Same goals: taking your rights and your money. Same people even. Business becoming the government is okay, but somehow government regulating business is evil socialism.

"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power. "

"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."-- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio [imdb.com]

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, CIA Director

The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.

I'm going to have do disagree with George Carlin on the last part of that. What they want is more than enough for themselves, and less than enough for everybody else. That way the can live high on the hog while being securely in charge of everything because everyone else is scrambling to get by. For our parents generation, this meant making people believe they needed more stuff, because there was just way to much of it. But it will not be the same for us. We will all be working our fingers to be bone while our parents retire in relative comfort. Retirement funds and social security will be protected, but younger people will work themselves to death for it. The last round of economic bailouts proved that strategy would work, so we'll probably seeing more of it over the next couple decades.

Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment.

But I enjoy watching TV shows (not all of them, the ones I chose to wach). I would not enjoy sitting in prison. I would much prefer to do things that I enjoy than things I don't enjoy. Why is it shocking then that I should spend a lot of time doing something I enjoy -- without coercion naturally -- instead of something I don't?

It's not particularly democratic (or respectful of other individuals) to disregard individual preferences even when you might have different ones. This sort of haughty attitude doesn'

...that the US would plummet on World Press Freedom rankings given that Fox News literally won the right in court to lie to its viewers.

Untrue. The reporters employed by the Fox affiliate in question were not told to lie, they were told to give the opposing side of the story. Furthermore, the court ruled that the plaintiffs had no case because the Fox affiliate broke no laws, not that Fox News could lie to its viewers.

It's a murder. We have hundreds of them every year. We have people get killed over domestic disputes, gang fights, muggings gone bad. We've got crazy parents killing their kids. We've got political crazies killing people they've been told to hate. We've got more murders than we know what to do with.

So why in God's name should we care about this one murder up in Canada? Because it's an "honor" killing? We get those in the US too, and they do get reported on, including the religion o

So I went to cnn.com and searched on "canada killing trial" and the top story is titled "Bomb threat delays 'honor' murder trial in Canada", so, yup, the media got the bomb threat story out once it was confirmed.

In the story:

"In taking the stand, Shafia swore to tell the truth on the Quran and he again invoked the holy book to say Islam does not condone killing people to preserve a family's honor."

I admit the word "Muslim" does not appear. Just Islam. And Quran. And all their names and country of origin.

I agree that it probably shouldnt normally be that big a deal, but I disagree with the conclusion that if its not normally a big deal then that its supposed to be taboo to report about it.

In this case its one of the key factors of the case, as its allegedly an honor killing. From the linked article:

"Though the Crown doesn't ever have to prove motive and these jurors don’t have to decide whether this was an "honour" crime, it was just that, she said -- a mass honour slaying driven by tribal values

When he says Militarization, he means tanks, heavy automatic weapons and other military grade equipment & tactics. Also, he means the laws to back it up. The patriot act was used against American citizens on US Soil (e.g. provisions of it were employed to allow coordination against protestors). The level of organization, manpower and resources that went into crushing the Occupy Wall Street movement makes the 60s era anti-civil rights movement look like a bunch of hillbillies doing a civil war re-enactme

In the UK, journalists can be arrested for disclosing non-authorized statements from police officers and there are other restrictions on the press that would simply not be thinkable in the US.

Citation very much needed.

The UK is currently having a serious bout of soul-searching (via the Leveson Enquiry) on media ethics. Newsprint in particular in the UK is more or less completely unregulated. They've been hacking phones, email accounts, and stalking people for years without any legal intervention- only now are people starting to ask why behaviour that is criminal for everyone (e.g., hacking into a private computer) is OK if you work for Heat Magazine.

Considering I live in the US, I think claiming i have "an axe to grind" is a little disingenuous. If I do, it is for good reason.

The freedom of the press in the US primarily applies to mass media. Over the last decade, free speech has been cut away for everyone else. Try video taping a public official or locating something embarrassing to the government/big business. At best you will have your camera/computer stolen, at worst you will end up in jail. Of course, the fact mass media still has freedom is meaningless, since they are owned by the same people who own the government. If you believe the US is freer than Europe, it is probably because you have listened to the official line, and not actually gone and figured out why the US might actually be ranked lower.

Did you participate in the rankings? Otherwise your "disingenuous" comment is off the mark.

Are you really telling me that the press in the US is less free than their counterparts in the UK? In Poland? In the UK, there are restrictions on the press that would be unconstitutional in the US. And Poland doesn't even respect the right to criticize religion

No, the US is not perfect. And yes, there should be a spotlight on such stupidity as "free speech zones". But if you are really claiming that these rankings re

So, because I see problems in the US, I am in the same boat as "people here who'd like to see the whole thing burn down"? There couldn't possibly be a reasonable position which involves considering the US is less free than X other country other than an attempt at treason? I can see why you'd be perfectly fine with the censorship the US does.

I don't see how you could call him a tool. But he did violate his oath, but I don't see how it should be considered treason unless treason is considered a very broad term in the military. Additionally, I cannot agree that anyone, no matter what they are guilty of, deserve a death sentence if their crime had no provable real negative effects. Also, there are many whistle-blower laws that are supposed to protect people like Manning (because not only do employers unilaterally dislike whistle-blowers, often it would be illegal to disclose information, except when you are a whistle-blower).

Take, for instance, that football coach that was just following the command structure when he passed the kiddie rape info up to the next guy. Suddenly he should have been a whistleblower "for the children!"

Even odds that a randomly selected person who thinks he should have "done more" also thinks that just about every other person out there shouldn't "pull rank" or "buck the command structure" or "blow the whistle". You get the culture y

But Manning didn't use any of the legitimate avenues available to him. The US armed services have a variety of way to go around your command structure to report a problem with your command structure (their not idiots!). It's usually a career-ending choice, but it's completely legal. There are ways to be a whistle-blower built into the army.

But that's not what happened - he didn't make any such attempt, he just revealed secrets in violaiton of his oath at the first opportunity. If the military let anyone get away with that sort of BS, we couldn't win a war. The simple fact is - Manning simply had no way of knowing what was really going on with the stuff he leaked, and it's just part of being in any army that you're not going to be told everything that's happening, so you can't really reach conclusions about whether someone distant from you is crossing the line. All you can legitimately do is say "hey this looks bad, that guy's chain of command needs to look at this", or in an extreme case "hey, that guy's entire chain of comman must be corrupt, so the JAG needs to get involved", but you'll never have any of the result of that explained to you.

Given the simply *massive* amount of coverage that the "Occupy" protests got and the sheer amount of "journalists" covering all of the various camp-ins, sit-ins, poop-on-cop-car-ins, etc... that happened, I don't remember seeing/hearing much about any journalists being arrested.

That could be because maybe their freedom of speech was being restricted, although I remember all the countless hours of "our freedom of speech is being violated" interviews, articles, and counter-counter-protests, and docu-dramas -- but not that./snark

I would like to know the following:1). The exact *TOTAL* number of reporters that were arrested covering "Occupy" in the US. So far I see one.1). Percentage, as a whole, of reporters that were arrested or detained directly covering the "Occupy" movement. Raw numbers would be nice as well.2). Percentage of reporters arrested that were violating a federal, state, or municipal law at the time.3). Percentage of reporters arrested that were accredited journalists with professional news organizations rather than blogs/activist newspapers/facebook posters.

I didn't see a whole lot of journalistic "repression" going on while I did see a lot of very mixed-up people talk endlessly about how they're being repressed to the nearest video camera or recording device while violating laws. I got nearly two months of media coverage in video, press, and web forms. I couldn't turn on the news without hearing about "Occupy".

Holland keeps its third place but loses a whole 9 points (US lost 14), the only reason we are still 3rd is because everyone started from a worse positin but it is hardly good. Wonder if anyone dares to call out Rukker on this (Previous Prime Minsters was Bakellende, the cambion offspring off Bush and Blair, Rukker is that guys pet rock, an object with absolutely no ideas, opinions or passion)... doubt it, probably everyone pats themselves on the back for still being 3rd no matter how steep the downwards slope is.

I hope this indicates that Reporters Without Borders is moving towards some independence and partisan neutrality, unlike their past performance.

You can either take money from Otto Reich, or you can be an impartial, credible advocate of press freedom. You can't do both.

Reporters Without Borders has chosen to take money from Otto Reich.

As this Wikipedia article explains, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders#Controversies [wikipedia.org] Reich was engaging in propaganda to support military campaigns against left-wing governments governments in Latin America, and he was on the board of the School of the Americas, which trained people in torture and executions.

They accused the Aristide government in Haiti of attacks on the opposition press, but they ignored attacks on journalists under the Latortue government.

The arrest of journalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff was not part of some systematic crack down on reporters/journalists. At best it was a swamped cop dealing with a large group and not noticing her credentials, at worst it was an idiot cop, maybe both. To infer, as I think the FA does, that the US is arresting journalists as part of some nation wide crackdown is completely false, or at least very misleading.

The arrest of journalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff was not part of some systematic crack down on reporters/journalists. At best it was a swamped cop dealing with a large group and not noticing her credentials, at worst it was an idiot cop, maybe both. To infer, as I think the FA does, that the US is arresting journalists as part of some nation wide crackdown is completely false, or at least very misleading.

... and calling for the murder of Julian Assange was just a misunderstanding. Seriously, what facts or reasoning do you have to offer? You attribute the arrests to idiocy, but who knows for sure. If you're thinking that not enough journalists were arrested, maybe it's about quality and not quantity. How may other journalists learned of her arrest, and decided they'd better follow the rules? Also, do you know how many journalists were arrested? I don't.

The Occupy protests were not covered fairly by the corporate media. If Reporters Without Borders got the reasons wrong, thinking it was arrests instead of journalists being house-trained and leashed minions of multinationals, they still got to the right conclusion.

If they consider direct media ownership by government officials as impinging on freedom of information. For example, Italy's Berlusconi owned controlling interest in much of Italy's media. He received quite a bit more consideration than any other politician would in the modern era. For any other politician a sex scandal would have been a blow to their career, while Berlusconi was only sank by Italy's near bankruptcy. As another example, on the same note, there is very little negative coverage of mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg. While he does not technically run the company, he does own Bloomberg LP which owns Bloomberg TV and US News. He is an unmarried man and most people don't even know the name of his girlfriend(girlfriends?). This is quite a fit for a politician of such high visibility. Clearly, the more media a politician owns, the less negative or controversial coverage they get.

This is just another in a succession of stories on./ today that has deeply shaken my faith in democracy and liberty in the civilized world. Earlier today (or maybe last night) there was a story posted about proposed legislation that would require ISPs to log all internet activity of customers in HI for 2 years, which would be accessible to law enforcement (or just about anyone) without a warrant or court order. Add to this the articles about DMCA exemptions for jailbreaking of devices, which are about to expire, and ACTA being signed by 22 European countries. Today,./ also brought news of the demise of the market for used console games (thanks to Microsoft), the NASDAQ delisting a broadcasting company under pressure from the Chinese government, and a new law that would provide for indefinite logging and retention of online activity of Australian citizens.

SOPA may be on hold, but I fear that we might be losing the war against big content providers and others who want to restrict our rights for financial or political gain. While I appreciate being made aware of these troubling developments, I find today's news to be incredibly distressing and depressing. While the war isn't over, I feel the balance is beginning to shift against us. What else can we do to tip the scales?

The ranking is somewhat "arbitrary", for example it puts Equatorial Guinea way over Iran and China, in terms of "press freedom".

Well, it is more or less impossible for any journalist to go to EG, and there is no written press at all (only one "free publicity mag", and one randomly published government "daily" that comes out about 5 to 10 times a year, and no library, bookshop,...)

So of course there is little "oppression", once you suppressed all the press...

In contrast the press in Iran and China is regularly oppressed but at least exist.

Hungary abolished all independent news outlets and moved all public ones under close control of the government while the threat of nationalist-extremists towards any dissenters increases. How the hell are they still at only +10?

The press freedom index is little more than a compilation of the opinions and beliefs of journalists across the world, based on questionnaires. There is no calibration for cultural differences, no verification or validation, no guarantee of unbiased sampling, little to ensure objectivity. Look at the questionnaire yourself:

The very first question is "During [the last year], were there any cases of journalists 1. Being illegally detained (without an arrest warrant, for longer than the maximum period of police custody, without a court appearance etc)?" Now think about that. In what way are random journalists qualified to answer this question? How can they even answer that question? In most cases, legality hasn't even been determined in the courts by then. In countries in which the media are fully or partially controlled or operated by the government, "journalists" would have a strong bias in favor of the government and they would be unlikely to be detained, because anybody critical of the government wouldn't even get hired; yes, to some degree this is true even in Western Europe. And in countries with few legal protections for journalists, detentions of journalists would be much more likely to be legal.

Mostly, what this attests to is utter incompetence on the part of RSF and the journalists who sign responsible for it.

So if journalists are not allowed to be at events to cover them, but can then write all they want (about what they missed?), then that is full freedom? It seems like that is what you're saying

. Not only are you wrong, but I have to wonder what kind of personal bias you have to even go down that line of logic.

You never specified "what happened to the journalists trying to cover OWS", purposely leaving your own argument vague. Probably because if you look at the details, you'll find they were in public space covering the public doing public things.

And yes, being prevented from doing that IS freedom of press, despite your Orwellianesque attempt to redefine the word.

no, see... it wasn't a freedom of the press issue, it was a freedom of the reporters issue. Two completely different things! The press is still free to report whatever they want, but the reporters can be imprisoned all the government wants without infringing on that!

Freedom of the press is about publishing without interference, not about being able to go anywhere one wants.

It was my understanding that the "occupy" protests, in general, have been occurring in public spaces (this is certainly the case in my city). I don't understand why it would be illegal to go to a public space in order to report on a protest happening there.

If you're talking about cases where journalists have committed illegal trespass, then perhaps I could see your point. But I assume that the press freedom rankings are based on arrests of journalists not committing trespass. I'm thinking about people such as Kristyna Wentz-Graff [citmedialaw.org]; since she was released without charge, it would appear that she was not committing a crime when she was arrested.

A decision to not prosecute does not necessarily mean that a crime was not occurring. It may mean that the evidence is not strong enough to get a conviction worthy of the resources spent on it or that the potential downside of continuing the prosecution (as of a journalist) outweighs the punitive measure against the accused.

I do believe that journalists should largely be left alone except in cases of safety problems (and even then sometimes it's their call), but it's getting tougher to nail down who is a j

A decision to not prosecute does not necessarily mean that a crime was not occurring. It may mean that the evidence is not strong enough to get a conviction worthy of the resources spent on it or that the potential downside of continuing the prosecution (as of a journalist) outweighs the punitive measure against the accused.

It's a fair point -- but in the Wentz-Graff case, the police never stated to her or anyone else what crime she was suspected of. The police seem to be running with "oops, we didn't know she was a journalist", which seems implausible given the clearly visible press card in the photographs of her arrest.

Of course, any one case can be put down to incompetence, but this isn't just one case. The SJS editorial linked from the TFA gives other examples, as well as a fairly measured commentary which takes into account the difficulties faced by police.

I agree with you that the explosion of "citizen journalists" creates a bit of a grey area here, but most of the cases under discussion seem to involve salaried, credentialled, professional journalists and reporters taking pains to advertise their status.

Maybe it is just incompetence all round, but the effect is the same whether or not this is a planned policy: journalists are discouraged from reporting on protests by fear that they will be arrested.

There have been for a long time. They're called press credentials, and they're supposed to mean that the journalists are there to observe and report on the events, not take part in them. They're not generally required, but are considered to be useful for authorities to know who is probably not partaking in the activities and to grant them leeway. Press credentials may also get a person into limited-access events such as certain press conferences where allowing the general public would create too much of

So what you are saying is that arresting the press at a gathering on public land is not a freedom of the press issue? What you mean is that we can say what we want, but are not permitted to observe what is happening on our land?

I'll get hate for saying it but in this case its probably an insult to the Nazis. During "Springtime for Hitler" in the mid 30s the Nazis were actually quite popular because as Hitler's bodyguard put it in the excellent BBC series "World At War" "At the time we were in a bad way, yes a very bad way. they promised us bread and jobs which seems like such a trivial thing now but then that meant a lot when you couldn't feed your family" so while the Nazis gave the boot to anybody that wasn't like them they also put the country back to work modernizing their systems whereas in America they just ship the jobs overseas or hire illegals and give you the boot. I doubt VERY seriously you'd find the US government popular with anybody but multigenerational superelite who have been making out like robber barons of old.

I'd urge everyone to read this article [thomhartmann.com] that drives a stake in the "job creators and lower taxes' lie, followed by this one on corporate taxes [huffingtonpost.com] and finally some numbers that will make you sick [theeconomi...seblog.com]. They are quite a good read and will help to show why we have gotten where we are. Personally i think the elite at the top are trying to condition the public to a mindset of fear so they won't have an uprising spread if they should roll the tanks. they have already seen what the Arab Springs have done to systems that had been there for years and they know they can only juggle the numbers, lie about the true unemployment figures, and print money like there is no tomorrow for so long before the thing falls down and we become another failed country like Greece. I don't know which is worse, the thought they might actually turn the tanks on us or decide that its our turn to be the bad guys and do what Germany did to Poland in South America. But I doubt the rulers at the top of the food chain will just go without a fight, nor do i think after buying the entire congress for years they will just sit by and let the people bring fairness back into the system no matter how badly we as a nation are suffering. i think its gonna get ugly folks, really ugly.

There are a couple of ironies which are missed in American politics. It's rather bewildering to watch from the outside.

1. On the liberal side: How can liberal ideals, which are literally those which pertain to being free, possibly be accomplished by handing more authority to a centralised bureaucracy?

2. On the conservative side: How can conservative ideals, such as lower taxation possibly be accomplished by increasing legislation, rules, regulations on social issues like abortion, drugs or increasing spending on military or law enforcement?

Both points of view, liberal and conservative are logically inconsistent with the methods being used to achieve them.

It seems to me that you are voting along the wrong axes. The true axis is authoritarian vs autarchic (I won't use the word "liberal" because the meaning has been perverted) and both sides; republican and democrat are authoritarian.

I'd urge everyone to read this article that drives a stake in the "job creators and lower taxes' lie

For a guy with "a double major in math and physics", he doesn't know much about presenting and interpreting data. Where's the r-squared value for those linear regression curves? There's also no reason to believe the relationship he's found is causative. If governments cut taxes in anticipation of a recession, you'd see the same sort of curves on the last chart.

I'm no "supply sider" by a long shot. But weak data doesn't help anyone.

...of how many total places there are - it's not the same to move down 20 positions out of 200 than 20 out of 21. Or equivalently, what % of the table you move (provided the table has not changed size due to countries being added/removed).

But this is a very subjective topic and even these more appropriate metrics conform a rather incomplete picture of the situation.

I... Um, I think that was what he was saying. What matters is the objective measure of press freedom, and how you performed on that; the US might not have changed at all, just 20 other countries got a whole lot better in the year. Or, as you so perspicaciously point out, if you are in "a cluster of excellent freedom rated countries at the top," that is the objective measure of freedom is good, then it doesn't matter where exactly you sit and how you move within that group.

Actually, the incorrect part is the summary.. the US fell 27 places... from #20 to #47.

And while I will admit there is still a long way we can still fall, perhaps some of us should reflect for a moment about the countries ranked higher than we are, and how they got there, considering where they were (in general, not absolutely speaking in terms of this particular metric) not too long ago... Some of these places were the places I I heard about in school when they talked about repression and how "those commies" were trying to take over the world... Phrases like "Papers, please.... Your papers..." were practically ingrained into our social consciousness, asked of poor innocents in every movie with a scene set in one of these places... I'm extremely glad to hear they are doing so well (and that the stereotypes "may" have been exaggerated;-) ) But I still have to ask; What the hell is happening to us? Aren't we supposed to be the shining light? Aren't we supposed to be the beacon of hope, the pinnacle of freedom? More importantly, why do so few people seem to care?

If you haven't, read some of Thomas Jefferson's writings. It's shameful how far we've turned from our original ideal, embodied in the Constitution - I know, "just a god damned piece of paper!" - but he warned about just such a possibility. 200+ years can dull the senses and purpose of a country. Seems like it might be time to learn our lesson all over again.

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations"

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

The Founders lived in a time of royalism and absolutism. Large-scale autocracies were the rule. We like to believe the age of absolute monarchs is over because they've been replaced by throne-less entities like the EU, the IMF, World Bank, and the US Federal war/welfare state. Afraid not.

perhaps some of us should reflect for a moment about the countries ranked higher than we are, and how they got there, considering where they were (in general, not absolutely speaking in terms of this particular metric) not too long ago... Some of these places were the places I I heard about in school when they talked about repression and how "those commies" were trying to take over the world... Phrases like "Papers, please.... Your papers..." were practically ingrained into our social consciousness, asked of poor innocents in every movie with a scene set in one of these places...

Curiously, Finland remains one of those countries where there's no general legal requirement to carry identification papers or indeed even to have any - and some people actually don't. (There's presidential election going on here right now, and every now and then people come to vote without papers, and there are a number of ways they can, including bringing along someone who can testify they're who they say they are.)

Nope. Finnish citizens in Finland are not required to possess any kind of identity card, and I know for a fact that many indeed do not have one at all. The text you quoted does not say a country must require or issue IDs to all its citizens, only that such a card is sufficient to travel abroad (with limitations), and while Finland does have national identity cards in the sense used in that directive, they're not issued to everybody automatically, you must explicitly request one, and it's not free (EUR 53 la

>What the hell is happening to us? Aren't we supposed to be the shining light? Aren't we supposed to be the beacon of hope, the pinnacle of freedom? More importantly, why do so few people seem to care?

Only two people types of people have ever said that: American politicians and American schoolteachers. Nobody else in the world has EVER thought of you that way, and frankly when us people in the rest of the world think of nations that are the epitomy of civil liberty and freedom - America hasn't even been in the top 10 in decades. The most liberal constitution in the world belongs to an African country for crying out loud.

Mod parent up. I don't know where Americans get this idea that everyone thinks they are the posterchild for civilization. "The American" in my mind as a child was a gun-toting redneck who liked war and killing.

I've talked to people who thought (usually justifiably) that their home country was pretty good, but the only people I've ever heard say anything like shining light, beacon of hope or pinnacle of whatever have been Americans.

My hobby: Finding old cold-war denunciations of Communist tyrranny that our current American leaders now think is a pretty good idea:

By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union. -- Ronald Reagan

More to the point, why would anyone care what % they drop in a ranking? A ranking is just an ordered list. It says nothing about the criteria used to put the elements in that order.

It's like finishing times for a marathon. If the leading pack crosses together, there could be only a 30 second difference between 1st place and 25th place. Meanwhile there could be a 5 minute difference between 25th place and 26st place. But if you look at just the ranking, you'd think that the 25th place finisher was nearly as bad as the 26th place finisher, when in reality he was actually very close to finishing 1st.

If you want to make relative comparisons like %, you have to look at the finishing times. In particular, the rank order is meaningless for gauging year-to-year changes. What if everyone improved? Then you could drop in rank despite doing better than the previous year.

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" -- Matthew 22:21

The "God" of your understanding has no place in politics, and if you're really worried about "gays" corrupting society, I think you're pretty misguided. Do you follow all of the commandments of the old testament? Do you still eat shellfish? "But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they ar

I appreciate you having the courage to reply -- it would be nice if you didn't do it as an AC, but I can't really fault you for that.

I think that the Bible, and particularly the New Testament offers pretty good guidance on a lot of thorny moral and philosophical issues (though I reserve the right to disagree at times). I picked up on your assault on "gays" because homosexuality and shellfish are given essentially the same treatment in Leviticus -- both are an "abomination". You could interpret that t